Boaters Rescue Baby Otter near Shoup Bay

Boaters Rescue Baby Otter near Shoup Bay

Sea otter rescued.By Lee Revis
Editor, Valdez Star

SEWARD - Jenga, a three to five day old sea otter pup found abandoned in the waters around Shoup Bay in Prince William Sound, is gaining weight and adjusting well to life in captivity at the nursery at the Alaska Sealife Center in Seward. "The last word I got, she was doing real good," said Trooper Tony Beck, who is the Wildlife Enforcement Officer for the Alaska State Troopers in the Valdez area.

The baby otter's drama first unfolded when a couple of local residents were out boating in Shoup Bay in late April. Trooper Beck says the boaters heard the baby otter crying, but saw no sign of any other otters around the area. "They said they heard it cry for hours," said Beck. "They looked for hours and hours to determine if mama was in the area."

After deciding the infant was abandoned, the boaters retrieved the pup from the water and kept it with them on their boat overnight, before returning to Valdez, where they turned the baby ball of fur over to Trooper Beck, who then put in a call to the Alaska SeaLife Center. "They put a lot of value on the little baby sea otters," he said.

The specialists from the Center gave Beck a crash course in infant otter care, which included feeding the pup human baby formula and Gatorade from a baby bottle and keeping her body temperature down by placing the two and a half pound pup on a blanket atop a bag of ice.

Next, Era Aviation, the commercial air carrier for Valdez, stepped into the rescue efforts, flying the pup to Anchorage free of charge. "Era was fantastic," said Tim Lebling, the rehabilitation specialist at the Center, who has been taking care of Jenga since her arrival in Seward.

The pup, who has doubled her weight to around five pounds, will move to a more permanent home at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago sometime next month. "It's the premier aquarium of the nation," said Lebling, who says a trainer from the aquarium has been working with Jenga for the last two weeks and will be the one to escort the pup to her new home.

Unfortunately for Jenga, she will always be a captive animal. Baby sea otters, like human babies, require round the clock care and in order to live in the wild, need the kind of nurturing and life training only a mother can give. "They're very dependent on their mom's" said Lebling.

While this story has a happy ending, it does not always end that way when people take baby animals out of the wild, thinking they are abandoned. Sometimes when people come across baby animals alone, they assume they are orphaned and need of human intervention, which is not always the case. Mother seals often leave their pups unattended for up to 24 hours, and sea lions for three or four days, according to Lebling. Referring to Jenga, the rescuers did everything correctly. "This one was observed for five hours," he said, which is just about the maximum amount of time you could expect for a baby sea otter to ever be alone in the wild.

Lebling also said that if you should come across baby sea mammals who seem to be alone, it is very important to keep as far a distance as you can from the animals, as mothers will often hide from their own babies if humans are in close proximity. He recommends that people who find distressed marine mammals call the Center's hotline at 1-888-774-SEAL, before taking baby animals out of their natural home in the sea.

Trooper Beck agreed with Lebling. He said if you run across baby animals who seem to be abandoned you should leave them alone and certainly don't touch them. "That would be my first recommendation," he said.

He also mentioned a sad reality for Wildlife Enforcement personnel in Alaska, especially when people report orphaned moose calves and bear cubs. "Sometimes it's pretty tough to find a home for them," he said.

Oftentimes in cases like that, where no refuge or zoo is willing to take in the animal, wildlife officials are put in the awkward position of putting the animal down, rather than leave it to a prolonged, certain death in the wild.